What we do

  • Tanmoy Samanta
    Associate Batch 2017

    Azim Premji Foundation motivates to immerse from own experience to appreciate continuous and experiential learning process. Since beginning of my professional journey, I have been given challenging opportunities to work with teachers and develop understanding of education, school and society. Azim Premji Foundation work culture has also influenced my personal growth immensely and encouraged me to look deeper in every aspect of education to contribute constructively for betterment.
  • Sonia Khudanpur
    Associate Batch 2018

    The work at school, with children and teachers, the many observations of classroom teaching, workshop sessions, the occasional interactions with education officials, the many hours of pouring over documents and books, discussions, meetings, and the struggle of living by yourself – the associate programme is a bag of myriad experiences worth carrying along.
  • Pritam Gupta
    Associate Batch 2015

    The foundation is not just a career option, it is one of the fewest organization which allows you to grow not only as a professional but also as an individual. The journey has been amazing, and I take pride to be associated with such a profession and able to contribute for such noble cause.  
  • Praveen Uniyal
    Associate Batch 2016

    Foundation gives ample opportunities to explore Education, primarily the public education system and its teachers, being utterly integral to the system. This happens through field experiences, internal capacity enhancement workshops and formal or informal discussions. The values, vision and work culture enable a conducive environment of learning to grow and evolve with optimism towards change while being critically reflective and thus contributing to teacher professional development.
  • Kalpana Bisht 
    Associate Batch 2018

    The year in the foundation has been a fertile ground to test what we have read and learnt as theory in our classrooms. It gives ample opportunities to explore, think and reflect on not only education but each and every aspect that we see in the society.
  • Alok Singh
    Associate Batch 2016

    The journey of associate program gave me a good exposure to the kind of efforts being made in different context for improving the quality of education in our country.

Our Vision, Purpose, Mission

Vision

Facilitate a just, equitable, humane and sustainable society

Over-arching purpose

Societal Change

Enablers

Education - both direct impact and a large positive multiplier

Mission

Have deep, at-scale and institutionalised impact on the quality of education in India.

The primary goal of the Foundation is to contribute to a society that is “a just, equitable, humane and sustainable society” as envisaged in the Constitution of India. Towards this goal, we have identified education as a critical area that has direct impact on the economic, social and cultural development of the nation.

In order to concretize our vision we have established two institutions - Field Institutes and Azim Premji University.

Field Institutes

We believe that the most important change leaders for improving education quality are (a) the teacher and (b) the education administrator. The Field Institutes are district level institutions that work in collaboration with the government school system on improving the capacities of teachers, school leaders, teacher educators and other education officials. This is facilitated through multiple modes of engagements - workshops, informal learning groups, Teacher Learning Centres, exposure visits, seminars, melas, etc. In addition we also work at the state-level to create enabling conditions for change. This is through building capacities of senior administrative and academic leaders, curriculum development, support for in-service teacher education processes and policy related work. At present we have Field Institutes in 45 districts across six states and one union territory. To know more about the Field Institutes, click here.

Azim Premji University

Azim Premji University was established in Karnataka by the Azim Premji University Act 2010 as a not-for-profit University. The University was founded as one of the key responses to the constraints and challenges that the Foundation encountered in education and as part of a larger strategy to contribute to the education and development sectors in the country. The University administers Masters and Doctorate level teaching programmes, conducts research, and engages with the world of practice. There are close linkages between our work in the field and the University to ensure a strong two-way connection between theory, research and actual practice. To know more about the University, click here.

Key Beliefs

  • We work with government rural schools primarily because almost all of India‘s under-privileged children study here. We believe in supplementing the work of the government not substituting it.
  • Our aim is to change the public education system rather than create “islands of excellence”. We believe it is important to raise the level of a large lake by one inch rather than fill a small glass of water. Therefore achieving scale along with quality is a key principle that informs our work.
  • We believe that accountability, performance, results and concern for facts are critical to our work. While we do acknowledge the importance of results, ours is not a short-term approach meant merely to generate results. We see our work as a serious, long-term commitment. Such work demands establishing a deep-rooted presence in the places where we work (via setting up of field institutions) and engaging on a continuous basis with the public education system to facilitate change.

To know more about the challenges facing the education system in India, click here.